WAITED DOWN : Another Honor From Minors Does Little for Sandy Alomar Jr.

For two years, you’ve been called the best catching prospect in all the land. For two years, you’ve been told that you belong in the major leagues. For two years, you’ve been told you’re going to be a star.

You’re going to honored at 10 a.m. today at a press conference announcing that “Baseball America” has chosen you as their minor league player of the year.

You appreciate the award and consider it a great honor, but it hardly makes up for the pain and torment you’ve endured this season.

The fact of the matter is there’s no way you’re going back to the minor leagues again. You can be traded. You can be suspended. You can be released. You are not going back.

“I just couldn’t take it again, I really couldn’t,” you say. “If it happened again, I don’t know what I’d do. I think my head would break.

“Sometimes, I can’t believe I made it through this year.”

Your name is Sandy Alomar Jr.

In one of the biggest surprises of this baseball season, Alomar still belongs to the Padre organization.

Alomar’s name came up in trade talks all winter and was involved in more rumors than there have been Elvis Presley sightings. All spring, Alomar was convinced he was heading elsewhere.

All season, he played for the Las Vegas Stars of the Pacific Coast League.

Considering the quality of catching in the big leagues, the Padres are well aware that keeping Alomar in the minors is like confining Mikhail Baryshnikov to aerobic classes.

The trouble, of course, is that the Padres already have one of the best catchers in all of baseball in 24-year-old Benito Santiago.

“He’s the best,” Alomar said, “because he’s done it in the big leagues. I can’t say I’m better than anyone up here just because I haven’t done it before.

“Sure, I have confidence in myself, but I’m not going to sit back and say I’m better than this guy or that guy, because I haven’t been in the big leagues.

“Right now, all I can say is that I’m a very good catcher in the minors.

“And that hurts.”

The Padres are quite cognizant of Alomar’s feelings. They know he belongs in the big leagues. They also know it would be unfair to him, and to Santiago, to have them splitting time.

One needs to go.

“Believe me,” Padre Manager Jack McKeon said, “we’re going to be trying, we’re going to be trying.”

If it were up to McKeon, Alomar would have been traded during this past off-season. He made it clear that Alomar was readily available. Make the right offer, he told every general manager, and Alomar was theirs.

The offer, or at least what McKeon considered a legitimate one, never came. Of course, there are those who say that plenty of offers were made, but McKeon was trying to hold everyone up.

“That’s ridiculous,” McKeon said. “People keep saying that, and you know what, I hardly got any offers. How do they know what I was asking for when they didn’t even ask?

“The only time it ever got close was when we tried to make a three-way deal with Seattle and Toronto, trying to get (Mark) Langston. That was it. That’s the truth.

“I certainly wasn’t going to give him away.”

With no choice, McKeon regretfully called Alomar into his office in late March. Alomar thought for sure this was it. He was waiting to be told to which team he was headed.

Las Vegas.

Again.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Alomar said. “I had my heart set on the big leagues. I’d already proven myself down there. I did not want to go back.

“Don’t get me wrong. I love the city. The people there have been great to me. But I just did not want to be there.”

Although the Padres’ minor-league complex is just a few hundred yards away from the big-league camp, it took Alomar two full days to make that walk. He had 48 hours, according to major-league rules, to report to the minors, and Alomar took every minute of it.

“I just sat in my hotel room,” Alomar said. “I just sat there thinking about everything. A lot went through my mind. Mostly, I just tried to forget about baseball.”

By the time Alomar finally reported to Las Vegas, he had his mind straight, he said. After all, McKeon told him in the meeting that he would continue trying to trade him. So, Alomar figured, what would a few weeks hurt?

“I really played well those two weeks,” he said. “I wanted to keep playing well so someone would take me. I didn’t want my trade value to drop.”

Two weeks passed. Alomar still was in a Las Vegas uniform. All of his enthusiasm, all of his hope, all of his concentration, vanished.

“I didn’t care about baseball anymore, I really didn’t,” he said. “I was so down. It never got to the point of quitting, but I sure thought about everything else. “I was thinking, ‘I was the best catcher in the minor leagues. Everyone was saying that, and I got the awards to prove it. But where did it get me? Where?

“It got me nowhere. It got me back to Las Vegas.’ ”

Alomar sulked for two months. He rarely went out with his friends. He talked little with his wife. He dreaded going to the ballpark.

“Every day was miserable for me,” Alomar said. “There were a lot of days where I didn’t even feel like showing up. Even the days I was there, I wasn’t there mentally. I wasn’t into the games.”

Finally, inexplicably, Alomar awoke from his trance. There was not a single incident that triggered his return, Alomar said, but it seemed that everything just sank in all at once.

How dare that broadcaster on ESPN--TV say that Alomar’s overrated and not the same catcher as he was a year ago? How dare scouts say that Todd Zeile of Louisville is a better catcher than him? How dare the Pacific Coast League even consider not inviting him to their All-Star Game.

“It got to a point where I decided acting this way wasn’t doing any good,” Alomar said. “I mean, I’m 23 now, I didn’t want to be 24 and still in triple-A. I didn’t want to be 29 and still in the minors. Instead of being traded, I didn’t want to be released.

“I also wanted to prove the Padres wrong. When they originally sent me down, they challenged me to prove them wrong, and that’s exactly what I did.”

Take a look at the final numbers: .306, 13 homers and 101 RBIs.

Hitting .351 with eight homers and 58 RBIs after June 5, it’s little wonder Alomar emerged as the Pacific Coast League’s Player of the Year.

And yet. . . .

“I laugh when people ask to compare me to Benny,” Alomar said. “Come on. How can I compare myself to him? He’s one of the best, if not the best, in the game. You can compare Benny to (Mike) LaValliere, (Tony) Pena and (Mike) Scioscia.

“I’m a minor-leaguer; you can’t compare me to anybody.”

“That’s why I think Benny will stay, and I’ll be the one to go. I don’t see how you can trade a Benny Santiago.

“People ask, ‘Yeah, but don’t you want to play with your dad (third-base coach Sandy Alomar Sr.) and brother (second baseman Roberto Alomar)?’ Yeah, I do. But they understand, as well as me, that the important thing right now is that I just make the major leagues.

“When they sent me down this spring, they told me to prove them wrong. Prove that I belong up here. Well, I did that. And now it’s time to go.”